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Sophos Reveals Top 10 Threat Lists For July
Chris Crum
Staff Writer
2006-07-31
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
Sophos has warned that even though the amount of infected email has gone down, users should not get a false sense of security.
Along with this warning comes the company's monthly report of the "most prevalent malware threats and hoaxes", with W32/Netsky-P at the top of the list. The company writes: The information, compiled from Sophos's global network of monitoring stations, reveals that while the Netsky-P worm, first seen in March 2004, remains the most widespread piece of malware traveling via email, the actual proportion of infected email has dropped to a low of just one in 222 (0.45 percent). This compares to the first six months of 2006 when, on average, one in 91 emails (1.1 percent) carried malicious attachments.
Sophos identified 3,715 new threats in July, bringing the total of malware protected against to 184,007. The majority of the new threats (87 percent) were Trojan horses, while just 13 percent were worms or viruses. Sophos notes that the decline in viral email implies that attackers are using other means of spreading their infections.
"The reality is that the number of new threats is increasing by thousands each month," says Sophos senior security consultant Carole Theriault. "While there may be less viruses and worms in the actual email, hackers are spamming out messages that link to malicious websites where Trojan horses lie and wait for innocent victims..."
For a look at the complete top ten list of malware for July as well as the top ten hoaxes and chain letters, check out Sophos's news release.
Tag: security, email, malware
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About the Author:
Chris Crum is a staff writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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